For
the next 3 years, I have a budget of $10.529 million to buy new library
books for the 50 secondary schools in my district. How did we do it? It
wasn’t as hard as you might think.

Creating a library renaissance
was not an overnight task. It was one big “research” assignment that began
by clearly defining the problems; asking essential questions; gathering
data, research, and resources; synthesizing information; massaging data;
communicating with decision-makers and stakeholders; and reflecting every
step of the way. But I had confidence from the very beginning that a positive
change would take place, because the citizens and leadership of Baltimore
County care about the education of their children.

Many school libraries across
the country are challenged by inadequate funding and staffing. This was
the case 3 years ago in Baltimore County when Doris Glotzbach and I, newly
appointed to the district’s library administrative office, rolled up our
sleeves and got right to the heart of the problem.

First, school library staff
was needed to carry out the vision; 33 out of 165 schools did not have
a library media specialist, nor were there any to find. Thus grew the partnership
with Towson University, whereby outstanding teachers were recruited to
enter the instructional technology/school library media graduate program.

Then came the fight for
funding. You just can’t point at the shelves and say, “What a deplorable
mess,” and whine. Look around. What is everyone clattering about? Technology!
I recall a technocrat telling all 175 librarians at a meeting that books
would be dead, and because of it, schools would not need libraries anymore.
Now that made me see fire. How could a so-called intelligent human being
think such a thing? After all, we were well into the Information Age!

The love affair with technology
blinded some, but not library media specialists. We had already enjoyed
a 15-year marriage with technology, progressing from the horse-and-buggy
kind to a 1400 baud modem and computer that connected students to online
information databases. We have never lost sight of our mission, which is
to teach students how to use information for critical thinking and problem
solving, nor have we divorced ourselves from one of the first technologies,
the book.

Holding fast to the belief
that a library should have a balanced collection of print, non-print, and
electronic information was the cornerstone to developing a strong information-literacy
instructional program. Creating an information-literate school community
was the goal. Technology was the means to the end, not the end itself.

The first order of business
was to demonstrate to the school community how technology should be used
to enhance teaching and learning. We embraced the opportunity to make visible
the unique talents and knowledge base of library media specialists, thus
changing the “perception” of the school community. Caretaker of moldy-oldie
book collections was not their role, nor their fate.

In 1995, the first Web site,
onLINE: The Librarians’ Information Network for the Essential Curriculum,
was launched by a group of tenacious library media specialists. No longer
would they participate in the common practice of handing out long lists
of Web sites that were placed in teachers’ and library media specialists’
three-ring binders. A dynamic information resource had to be created. We
truly understood the difficulty of getting to the “right information” as
we grew up learning to use the Internet in the “gopher” years. I shudder
when I think of those days...typing long numbered pathways (sometimes as
many as a dozen) in order to get to the gold. Learning how to publish on
the Web was challenging. We taught ourselves by reading—you got it, books—and
having a strong sense of purpose and colloquial support. Marketing onLINE
and the technological talents of library media specialists and, more importantly,
the value of the library media program, was a joy! We showed all how librarians
are participants in the Information Age as users, navigators, teachers,
and producers.

The next order of business
was to harness the power of technology to market, refine, and expand the
library media instructional program. For three summers, teams of library
media specialists collaborated with curriculum designers to develop online
learning modules. Currently, there are 59 Online Research Modules that
represent an exciting new way to guide student research toward a higher-level
thinking that fully utilizes electronic resources. Students who use the
self-guided modules are challenged to employ thoughtful reading, analysis,
evaluation, and synthesis of information to create answers, not just to
find them. The modules are designed as Web pages that present students
with a clear research structure, including a research scenario, a learning
task, rubrics and scoring tools, directions for use of various media resources,
and links to useful Web sites. Module availability on the Internet also
serves to make curriculum information accessible to parents and the general
public.

A community service initiative
geared toward marketing the library media program and involving parents
was our Parent Internet Education program. Again, library media specialists
used technology to deliver the message and the online curriculum. All 175
school library media specialists offered a series of training sessions
over a year. While parents learned about the benefits of the Internet and
the safety issues, they also learned a great deal about the technological
expertise of library media specialists.

In concert with our Web
publishing successes, library media specialists were also applying technology
to another practical use—automation. It was yet another opportunity to
garner community support by involving parents, students, and anyone who
was willing to help with the retrospective conversion of library holdings.
Every book, new and old, had to be handled and assessed for its usefulness
for retention in the collection or retirement into “library heaven.”
Weeding the shelves of the worst of the worst created an awareness of the
need for funding. Discarding “misinformation” and “unappealing” reading
materials left library shelves with a lot of open spaces. The “visual cue”
was used along with the data to confirm that our libraries did not meet
Maryland State standards for collection size (12,000 for elementary, 15,000
for middle schools, and 18,000 for high schools). However, we couldn’t
stop with size as the single criteria for assessing the collection.

This was lesson number one.
The superintendent’s staff needed more information. That our school libraries
did not meet the state standard for collection size wasn’t enough: They
wanted to know about the “quality” of the collection. Faced with this mammoth
task and only limited time to respond, the BCPS library “team”—comprised
of Glotzbach and me—put our heads together to come up with a solution.
A technological solution was the key.

A representative sample
of schools from the district was selected for a comprehensive library collection
analysis. Fifteen schools were analyzed using three criteria: collection
size, number of items per pupil, and currency of the collection.

Following our initial findings
presentation to the superintendent’s staff, we were asked to carry out
a thorough analysis of the remaining schools in the district. Every library
media specialist was provided with a substitute for 2 days to accomplish
the required task. Systematically, each library media specialist completed
the collection analysis for their school using Chancery Software’s Library
Pro automated software to collect the statistical data.

“What fellow library specialists
and education professionals should understand is that library automation
software has many more uses than simply managing circulation,” says Doris
Glotzbach. “Our particular library software, Chancery Solution’s Library
Pro, is extremely versatile and capable of organizing, sorting, and grouping
information for a variety of purposes using Boolean logic and sorting options.
Library Pro is [also] an essential tool for students to use to develop
information-literacy skills for critical thinking and problem-solving.”

Why We Only
Address the Problem at the Secondary School Level

The
Maryland State Legislature addressed the problem of inadequate library
collections at the elementary school level with the passing of the Elementary
School Library Enhancement program. For the five-year funding period 1998-2002,
counties in Maryland receive state funds, matched by local county funds,
to upgrade collections in the elementary schools.

Our team then presented
to the superintendent’s staff the collection analysis results for all 165
schools. Along with the findings, we made a budget request of $10.529 million,
over a 3-year period, to bring the secondary library collections up to
state standards with resources that were current, age-appropriate, and
supported the essential curriculum of Baltimore County Public Schools.

The School Library Facts
Web site was launched to “tell the story.” Remember the “communicate” part
of the research assignment? Technology again was used in a very practical
and powerful manner. The Web site contains the following:

Outline of the collection-analysis
process and findings.

Explanation of the roles of
the library media specialist (teacher, instructional partner, information
specialist, program administrator).

What media specialists teach
students and why it is important.

Links to research findings
on how li-braries contribute to student achieve-ment.

Links to articles published
in newspapers, Web sites, and journals about the journey and funding success.

How collections will be developed.

The school board unanimously
passed the budget request. But that was only one hurdle overcome; there
were several more still to negotiate.

Data can be used effectively
to justify needs and to answer essential questions. Budget requests are
more likely to be funded when the rationale is based on statistical data
that clearly demonstrates areas of need for collection development along
with an understanding of how libraries contribute to student achievement.
There were four key stages of the budget approval process, each of which
had to be passed to be successful:

Superintendent’s Staff

Board of Education of Baltimore
County

County Executive

County Council

The Baltimore County Council
wanted specific assurance that money allocated for library books would
be spent only for this purpose. The statistics offered an inarguable case
about the funding patterns over the last 10 years and the current state
of the library collections. Using the data collected from Library Pro automation
software, the Baltimore County government budget office created a formula
to determine the exact amount to be allocated to each secondary school
for this funding request.

Another Powerful Use of TechnologyHow will quality collections
be developed? Use technology to work smart and think out of the box! List
all the tasks that need to be done, apply knowledge of selection and collection
development (remember the courses in grad school?), and identify the resources
(information and human) that can assist with the process.

The magnitude of rebuilding
library collections is daunting. It must be done effectively, efficiently,
and with accountability. These are the operative words that demanded a
technological solution and a partnership with a major book jobber.

Effective: To develop
quality collections to support the curriculum, interests, and ability levels
of the students.

Efficient: For the
ordering process to be completed by library media specialists in a 7-month
time frame.

Accountable: To demonstrate
that funding is spent responsibly, equitably, and for its intended purpose.

The Office of Library Services
developed Project Specifications, of which a technological solution was
a key requirement. Two book jobbers responded to the Project Specifications.
Presentations by both were made to a committee comprising members of the
purchasing, accounting, and library depart-ments. Follett Library Resources
was selected by the committee because it could meet all of our Project
Specifications.

What are the Project Specifications
and how will Follett Library Resources work with the Office of Library
Information Services to address them?

Spec I: May 2000 Baseline
Collection Analysis
School library inventories
(MARC records) were exported from the automated catalog and given to Follett
to generate a baseline snapshot of the collection (the collection analysis
done by the Office of Library Information Services was conducted in December
1999). It was essential that we had an up-to-date baseline snapshot of
the collections before the project begin date (August 30, 2000) so that
the results of the initiative could be evaluated.

Spec II: June 2001 Final
Collection Analysis
Will be used by the Office
of Library Information Services and the Office of Research and Data Analysis
to measure the collection growth, and along with other school system data,
the impact that quality collections and information literacy instruction
have on student achievement.

Spec III: Online Ordering
with Password Protection
Since Follett already had
an online ordering system in place [Titlewave at www.titlewave.com]
it was compelling that we use it for our purposes. The online ordering
information must include reading level, title, author, ISBN number, cost,
checkbox to select, and be arranged by Dewey classification.

Spec IV: Five Specialized
Online Selection CatalogsThe Office of Library Information
Services worked closely with Follett to develop catalogs of quality books
from which library media specialists can make selections. Follett removed
from the catalogs current school library inventories for each school before
posting the catalogs online.

As library media specialists
order from each of the catalogs and inventories change, Follett will remove
the duplicates from the next catalog in the ordering cycle. The catalogs
and ordering schedule are as follows:

1. Core Collection
Catalog
H.W. Wilson’s authoritative
core selection references used are Senior High School Catalog and the Junior
and Middle School Catalog. Phase I Ordering Cycle: 8/30-10/15, 2000.

2. Curriculum Map Catalog
Keywords and descriptors
specific to the BCPS Essential Curriculum indicators were cooperatively
generated by all curricular offices and library media specialists. This
information was given to Follett to enable its collection development department
to search its database of all available publications in order to produce
a catalog specific to BCPS curriculum. Phase II Ordering Cycle: 10/15-11/15,
2000.

4. Consideration File Catalog
School library media specialists
will provide Follett with their local school “wish list” of books recommended
by the educational community, books needed to support unique instructional
programs, initiatives, and special populations, and recommended books in
current review journals. Phase IV Ordering Cycle: 11/30- 12/20, 2000.

Spec V: Online Fund Tracking
Since the stakeholders
were involved in helping obtain the $10.529 million, it is important to
keep everyone informed as to the completion of the project. Therefore,
Follett will include in the online ordering system a fund-tracking component.
This component will be made available to schools and stakeholders in order
to monitor each school’s legislative district, order status, number of
items delivered, amount encumbered, actual dollars spent, and a running
balance of the school’s allotment.

Spec VI: Cataloging and
ProcessingFollett will use the catalog
and processing specifications on file at Follett Library Resources to catalog
and pro-cess all book orders. Books will arrive at the school “shelf-ready”
and be immediately available to students and teachers. MARC records for
uploading in the school’s automated catalog will be available via the Internet.

Spec VII: Shipment of
Materials
Follett will ship orders
within 30 days of receipt of the school’s order.

Summary and ConclusionHere’s a sorry fact: Across
North America, it is estimated that the percentage of schools with the
requisite numbers of books in their library collections is well below acceptable
standards. Using the Baltimore County schools district case history as
a guide we can conclude the following:

The need of students is the
reason for quality collections. Visualize the end result—students actively
engaged, working, reading, and learning in libraries.

Funding requests must be supported
by data, research, and involvement of the stakeholders.

Solutions are based on problem
solving that clearly identifies the issues(s), the essential questions,
available resources, and effectively organizes and presents the data.

Having a strategic plan of
action is paramount to effecting positive change. Document every step along
the way and keep organized in order to readily retrieve information.

Leadership that demonstrates
how technology can be used as a powerful tool for learning, teaching, and
communicating strengthens the case for funding requests.

Having data is one thing, but
being able to communicate it in a meaningful way to support your funding
requests is the key to collection analysis.

Gathering the physical evidence
of the decaying information resources is an important part of the “visualization”
of the problem. [Note: The “shelf of shame” kept in the Office of Library
Information Services was a powerful tool. It was shared with stakeholder
groups, including the news media.]

A sophisticated library management
software provides library media specialists with a way to gather statistical
data to support funding requests.

Such software enables gathering
of information that allows accurate numbers to argue a convincing case
for new and improved funding.

Fiscal responsibility suggests
any budget request should be backed by statistical data, and once funded,
data should reflect the effect of the funding and how it has contributed
to improved student achievement.

In these times of increased
emphasis on accuracy and funding accountability, the fast response to a
variety of measurement criteria is essential and is what school boards
have come to expect.

The resolution to the problem
lies far beyond an individual’s sole efforts. It is a community problem
that that requires a community solution. Give up the “my” problem/solution
attitude for the “our” problem/solution thinking and actions.